Summer kills
Rage 1.3

It was then that Ethan's anger spilled over. He called her a rather unsavory name—a word that hit Olivia like a slap to the face. The fountain's serene murmur was replaced with a deafening silence; even it seemed shocked by Ethan's outburst. With tears stinging her eyes and dignity hardened into armour, Olivia retaliated. Her usually melodious voice turning icily firm as she said, "Ethan, if you refuse to embrace progress and insist on clinging to the past, then I have nothing more to say to you."

Their feud, like a bitter nor'easter, had blown in and left a chilling coldness in its wake. Unresolved tension clung to the mansion like an unwanted guest. The couples retired once again to their chambers-this time not only physically isolated but now emotionally too. As the last light of day slipped away, the ancestral mansion seemed to sigh once more this time a sigh of resignation and poignant longing for harmony to return.

The grandiose mansion, shrouded in the shadow of the night, bore silent witness to the siblings' turmoil. The austere portraits of their ancestors, stalwarts of a bygone era, stared down from the ornate walls with stern and reproachful expressions. They had been present for countless familial disputes throughout the centuries, silent observers to every triumph and tragedy. Yet never had they witnessed a fracture as profound as this.

Ethan retired to his study, the cavernous room echoing with the noise of the ferocious argument that had just transpired. He sank into his high-backed chair, rubbing his temples in a useless attempt to dispel the pounding headache that threatened to split his skull. The flickering candlelight danced across the room, casting long, looming shadows that seemed to reflect his mounting frustration.

Adjacent to this somber scene was Olivia's boudoir which contrasted Ethan's study in both tone and temperament. Filled with soft pastels and delicate trinkets collected over a lifetime of travels, it radiated an aura of openness and adventure. Olivia sat by her vanity mirror but her hazel eyes saw not her reflection but a vision of an uncertain future. A single teardrop slid down her cheek - a testament to her stoic resolve.

The silence was disrupted by the distant tolling of the clock tower chiming midnight - a reminder that time stops for no one, not even for those embroiled in personal battles. As each resonating chime faded into darkness, it seemed as though the very walls of the mansion absorbed their lingering echoes, stoically enduring their shared pain.

Outside, the moon bathed everything in hues of silver and sapphire - casting a supernatural light on the mansion's gardens where once laughter echoed and love thrived. Now they lay desolate; roses wilted and vines unchecked - mirroring the decay inside its stoned walls.

When dawn cracked and the golden rays of sun penetrated through the mansion's tall, stained windows, it revealed the physical signs of their emotional warfare. Overturned chairs, clenched fists marks on antique tables, scattered papers - silent screams of the previous night's altercation.

As days turned into weeks, the mansion lean heavily under the weight of their quarrel. Olivia and Ethan continued to live as strange, separated by both ideology and emotional walls. It seemed as though the mansion - a silent participant in their feud - was itself mourning its once harmonious occupants.

The once vibrant and stately mansion, now echoed with despair and bitterness - a grand tomb to a fractured family. Yet, beneath the layers of anger and disappointment, lay a faint glimmer of hope: a shared history of love and understanding yearning to resurface. While uncertainty filled its cavernous halls, so too did resilience. It whispered through its secret passages, rustled through the ancient tapestries, and reflected off the polished marbles - a house divided against itself cannot stand.

One gloomy afternoon, as thunder reverberated through the lofty halls and torrential rain painted dark rivulets down the mansion windows, Olivia found herself in the grand library. A sanctuary of knowledge and wisdom, it had once been a place of shared dreams and intellectual debates, but now it was a vault of silenced conversations.

The wooden shelves were lined with tomes of poetry, philosophy, and history - mute witnesses to the love that had blossomed between her and Ethan but had slowly lost to time and indifference. The desk in the center was strewn with old letters: declarations of love penned beneath a rose moon, promises made under radiant suns.

As Olivia perused these relics from their past, her heart contracted with a melancholy so powerful it felt like physical pain. Her gaze fell upon an old photograph tucked between the pages of a dusty book - a moment frozen from a happier time. It was them, smiling without pretense or bitterness; their eyes sparkling with the early bloom of love.

Suddenly she realized, they were no longer those people in the photograph. They had changed, mutated under the weight of their quarrels into creatures unrecognizable to each other. The glimmering couple in the photograph was lost under layers of resentment and disappointment. It was this thought that struck Olivia with an avalanche of clarity; it was over.

She picked up her quill then, stained with dried ink blots, its nib sharp and cold. She began drafting a letter to Ethan - one last echo through the mansion's cavernous halls - filling it not with anger but with sorrowful acceptance. Weeks later when she handed Ethan the letter under the poignant glow of their once shared moonlight, he read his name written with her elegant handwriting colored by sadness that flowed like river through her every word. He didn't need to read more than a line to know what it held inside - a farewell symphony, an end to their fractured symphony. Olivia watched him, her face held high but her heart crumbling. The mansion too, seemed to sigh around them, its tall shadow looming with somber acceptance- a fitting backdrop for the end of their shared chapter. As Ethan folded the letter, the mansion's gardens bristled with a chill wind - a fading whisper of their love story, coming to its inevitable end.